


There's a Coldness in My Blood and I Know What That Means

by showzen



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Flashbacks, Gen, Mike Townsend has ADHD, no major character death but it is discussed, not important to the story but VERY important to me, seattle garages
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:21:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26701348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/showzen/pseuds/showzen
Summary: Mike pushes the heel of his palm into the dough and furrows his brow in thought. The radio jabbers away to his right - KGAR hosts are always so high energy and there’s always so much background noise that it’s hard to keep up with the game sometimes, but from what he can figure out, Jaylen’s just hit someone with a pitch.Again.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 33





	There's a Coldness in My Blood and I Know What That Means

Mike’s worried about Jaylen.

More accurately, he’s worried about what she’s been doing since she came back. All in all, the two of them haven’t talked much since the end of last season - between Mike’s sudden departure from the league, and the mental strain associated with literally coming back from the dead, and the awkwardness in the whole situation they’ve managed to just avoid each other. By chance or by design, Mike doesn’t even know.

He pushes the heel of his palm into the dough and furrows his brow in thought. The radio jabbers away to his right - KGAR hosts are always so high energy and there’s always so much background noise that it’s hard to keep up with the game sometimes, but from what he can figure out, Jaylen’s just hit someone with a pitch.

Again. He grimaces and continues to knead. 

He had never hit someone with the ball. Not even by accident, which should tell you something. A pitcher as terrible as he was, in a game with players of varying sizes, shapes and strike zones, and yet he never managed to hit someone. Obviously he’d never  _ tried  _ to hit anyone.

He slams the dough down on the surface. That’s what worries him. He  _ could’ve  _ hit someone, he bets, if he’d tried, but he didn’t. But Jaylen  _ is  _ hitting people. What that implies to Mike is that she’s doing it on purpose. He frowns down at his flour-coated hands.

-

Mike sits in the dugout. A headache is starting to pulsate through his skull. He rests his face in his hands and heaves a huge sigh.

That game  _ sucked. _

“Nice pitching, Townsend,” he hears Abbott sneer as she walks by.

“As always, pitchin’ the ball in the same way, to the same place, every time,” Avila adds, voice lighter than Allison’s but no less mocking. “Like an asshole.”

The words aren’t yet set to a tune.

He doesn’t respond. He just shrinks into himself a little bit more and doesn’t take his face out of his hands. He thinks he might just keep it there forever.

The seat beside him creaks. He wonders who’s come to insult him next.

“Hey,” comes the voice of Jaylen Hotdogfingers. It’s not a particularly kind or gentle voice, but it is determined, and notably, holds no hint of scorn. Mike allows his hands to drop away a little to peek at her.

“Hi,” he says back, uncertainly.

Jaylen is a far, far better pitcher than him. No doubt, if she’d been the one on the mound this game instead of him, they would’ve won. Or at least, they wouldn’t have lost so badly.  _ So  _ badly. He winces as the fresh memory of standing up there with every member of his team glaring at him resurfaces.

There’s a moment of quiet, and then Jaylen puts her hands behind her head and reclines back in her seat in such a way that Mike would have to unfurl himself from his insecure posture to talk to her properly. Clever.

“Tough game, huh?” She says. Warily, Mike leans back, mimicking her pose unconsciously. If she notices, she, kindly, doesn’t comment.

“Yeah,” he mumbles.

Another silent moment. Anxiety quivers in his chest - he wonders if she’s expecting him to say more, and that’s why she’s not saying anything, but he doesn’t know what to say, and--

“I had a tough game, the other day,” she says carefully. “Against the ‘Beams, too. Man, they were just getting run after run… It was rough. Really rough.”

There’s a third long pause. Mike says, “Oh,” to fill the silence, and because he doesn’t know what else to say.

She sighs loudly. “Look, Townsend, do I have to spell it out for you?” He swallows and gives a tiny, doleful smile at her harsher tone. Even she isn’t immune to deriding him on occasion. He supposes she’s only human. “We all have bad games, man. Sure, maybe your bad games are worse than everyone else’s, but who cares, right?”

She sits up suddenly, claps a hand to his shoulder and looks him right in the eyes for the first time during this conversation. “You play for the team, Mike, I can see it. And yeah, you suck, but you play your heart out, right?”

He nods, because it’s true. He likes the splort, but he loves the team. Even though they don’t always love him back. Instinctively, he glances away from direct eye contact.

“That makes you a good player.” With that she stands up, stretches. “Get back to the Garage as soon as you can, alright?”

He really, really doesn’t want to, because he knows the reception he’ll receive when he does. He doesn’t know how to respond. He starts to zone out and--

“Hey!” Jaylen snaps her fingers twice in front of his face. “Earth to Mike. Jeez.”

He flinches. “Sorry.”

“Get back to the Garage,” she enunciates, raising an eyebrow. “Alright?”

He nods meekly. “Okay.”

Satisfied, Jaylen starts to walk away. Just before she’s entirely out of his sight, she stops.

“Oh, and Townsend?” She adds over her shoulder. “You gotta stand up to us once in a while, alright?”

He nods again. Well, it’s a lie - Mike Townsend isn’t the type of person who stands up to other people - but she seems to accept it, because she nods back and walks away.

-

He tries to focus on kneading the dough. Despite it all, he reaches over and turns the radio up a little.

It’s the bottom of the 5th. Two outs, and Richardson Games is coming up to bat for the Shoe Thieves. 

Ball. Mike frowns and pulls off a fistful of dough, balls it up in his hand.

Strike one, looking. This feeling is familiar; he remembers the tension on being up there on the mound, the noise of the crowd phasing away as his grip on the ball tightens.

Ball. That’s 2-1. He remembers this sort of thing happening when he pitched. He would always start to shake a little bit by the second ball.

Strike two, looking. He figures Games is trying to bait her out, and winds back his pitching arm. He pictures Jaylen doing the same thing.

Ball.  _ Filling up the dots,  _ he thinks anxiously, imagining the scoreboard. Mike shuts his eyes and tries to imagine how she pitches. The mental image he conjures up is that of a smiling Season 1 Jaylen, before everything - she had always had such a love of the game. Even when they were losing, there’d be this twinkle in her eye when she was on the mound.

He knows that isn’t accurate anymore. He hasn’t had a chance to go to any of their games this season, but he’s watched them on the TV, and she doesn’t pitch with the same liveliness she used to. She always just looks... angry.

He rolls the ball in his hand. He prays she doesn’t hit Games. He pitches a fastball.

The commentators explode with excitement as Games strikes out looking. Mike breathes a sigh of relief and blinks himself back to reality, only to discover he’s thrown a lump of dough at his cupboard door. It’s left a sticky print, and then fallen to the floor in a cloud of flour.

He sighs and gets to work cleaning up.

-

Mike had brought muffins that morning, in the hopes that they’d be eaten to celebrate a win. As it turns out, they’re consolation muffins instead. They all get eaten anyway.

Bad games feel worse since Jaylen’s incineration. He tries not to think about that - he’s so scared of being incinerated, or seeing it happen to one of his teammates - but it’s unavoidable sometimes. She was, like, the official Garages cheerer-upper. After every bad game, when everyone was moping, she’d bounce into the room all high energy and find some way to rally their spirits. Teddy tries to fill that role these days, but somehow it isn’t the same.

“C’mon, we can’t lose hope,” Duende half-heartedly encourages, standing in the middle of the room. He looks like he’s trying to address the whole team, but Oliver is only sort of looking at him, and Tot and Luis are having their own conversation off in the corner, and Allison just blatantly has her back to him. He deflates a bit. Mike feels bad.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Mike adds hesitantly. “We just gotta make it to the playoffs, right?”

The whole team seems to simultaneously glare at him and avert their gaze. He doesn’t care if they were Jaylen’s last words, they’re  _ true.  _ And it’s what she would’ve wanted, he figures. She would’ve hated to see the team in such low spirits.

Teddy just makes a face at him and gives up, going to sit down somewhere.

Mike misses Jaylen.

-

He misses most of the KGAR hosts’ post-game chatter in the mess of cleaning up the spilled dough. When he finally returns to kneading, they’ve gone to music instead, and  _ of course,  _ the Garages’ most popular single is on.

_ The waterboy looks down on him _

_ As he picks up the ball _

_ It’s another awful day, it’s another awful day _

He grimaces and punches a fist into dough harder than he means to.

_ For Mike Townsend _

_ Our prodigal son, our shameful pitcher, Mike Townsend _

_ And he pitches the ball in the same way, to the same place, every time, like an asshole _

Yeah. Duende’s vocals are loud and powerful as ever, but he hates this song. 

Even so, he doesn’t reach to turn off the radio. If nothing else, it serves as a bit of nostalgia - for a time when all he had to worry about was that his teammates didn’t like him.

Man, he was so upset when they released that song. That’d been around the time when he’d been semi-officially phased out of the band - only part of the team ‘cause his name was on some dotted line somewhere. 

Mike beats his hands into the dough and sighs. He doesn’t hold it against any of them, not anymore, but he knows deep down it wasn’t right, the way they treated him. Jaylen used to say that it was because he was an easy target. Everyone else sniped back, but not Mike. Nobody else would lay down and take being pushed around, or locked out of the hangar, or having songs written about how useless they were.

-

First Jaylen. Then Bennett. Tiana. Shaquille. Now Derrick.

It doesn’t seem fair. None of it is fair. Mike wonders if the rogue umps might have some sort of vengeance against their team.

Teddy calls a team meeting straight after the game ends, when everyone is still reeling from seeing Derrick getting torched right in front of them. They huddle in a circle, as is customary, and Teddy throws his arms around the nearest two people to him. Mike finds himself being one of those people, and chuckles lightly in spite of everything.

“Look, guys,” Teddy says thickly, still a little choked up. “This sucks. This  _ sucks,  _ right?”

The whole team mumbles an agreement.

“We’re losing people left and right. I… I don’t know what motivation these stupid umps have, if any at all.”

“I think it’s just random,” Mike adds. The team immediately turns their collective glare on him. He looks at the floor. “I-I mean, maybe. Probably not. It still sucks.”

“No, see, this is what I was gonna talk about,” Teddy says, looking earnestly at Mike and squeezing his shoulder, and then turning back to address the group as a whole. “We’ve  _ gotta  _ stop being so shitty to each other. Y’know, I know we like to make fun of each other, and that’s fine, but… I think we all know we go too far sometimes, and with some people.”

Mike looks at anything but everyone else. Everyone else looks at anything but Mike.

“We can’t afford to let people die thinking they were hated,” he says simply, “and that gets more likely every day. So, can we pledge, or something, to just… be a little nicer to each other?”

A nod ripples around the group. Teddy smiles softly. “Good. Alright, now screw off, idiots.”

The group splits off. They’re in considerably better spirits than before.

-

The bread’s ready to go into the oven. Well, it’s not. He knows he should let it sit for a bit before he bakes it, but he’s impatient, so with oven gloves on he slides the tin full of dough into the oven. He flexes his hand inside the mitt. It’s a bit like a very puffy pitching glove.

Ever since that team meeting, things had gotten better. People still made fun of Mike, because he was Mike, and he still had no comebacks, because he was Mike, but it felt… less. Friendlier. He didn’t get sneered at so much after a bad game, and after a good one, they’d jostle him around and congratulate him like any other player. He became a member of the band again (with the Way Cooler Anyway Mike Townsend Solo Project, fortunately, flaming out the second he did). Things became… good. And that was pretty nice, for a team he never thought would feel so much like home.

He got a good two seasons of that before everything changed again.

-

Everything is activity this season. Sometime early in the season, just after the new idol board went live (which Mike is  _ very  _ proud of his position on, by the way) one of the Moist Talkers - he wants to say, Mooney Doctor, maybe? - figured out that fans could idolise dead players. Combine that with the blessing to be won at the end of the season that recruits the player at number 14 to the winner’s team, and you have necromancy on your hands.

The current target of the blessing is shaping up to be Jaylen.

Mike’s excited. He knows some other people are wary, even some Garages, and they have good reasoning, but… the league seems to be on board. Some of the bigger teams have taken the plan and run with it, so he doesn’t know if they could stop it now even if they wanted to.

It’s not until Ron spots him checking the idol board that he even thinks about the potential consequences.

“Risky business,” Ron rumbles from behind him. 

Mike jumps a little, and then turns around. “Huh?”

He gestures noncommittally at Mike’s phone. “This whole necromancy thing. Very risky.”

“How so?”

Ron sighs. “Shut up, Townsend.”

Mike does. He recognises Ron’s thinking face, so he doesn’t mind too much; he knows the answer is on its way.

“Think of it like this,” Ron says after a minute or so. “We actually don’t know where she is right now. She could be on any hellish plane, any place haunted by demons - hell, could be somewhere like a sort of heaven. She could bring something evil back with her. She could come back wrong. We could be taking her away from somewhere good. I mean, what if she doesn’t want to come back?”

Mike offers a wry smile. “I don’t think blaseball players go to heaven.”

Ron lets out a laugh, mirthless and surprised. “Ah, maybe you’re right, man. Maybe you’re right.”

They lapse into silence. Mike returns his attention to his phone. Jaylen’s still at 14. 

“But, I mean, Townsend,” Ron adds quietly after a little while. “There can only be so many pitchers on a team. What do you think’s gonna happen if she does come back?”

Oh.

The next time they’re playing in Canada, Mike makes a mental note to find and talk to Mooney Doctor. If anyone was to know the consequences of necromancy, it’d be the person who suggested it in the first place, right?

At the end of the handshake line, he encounters her. She grins and shakes his hand warmly. “Good game.”

He smiles awkwardly, unsure of what to say. “Right. Um, can I ask you something?”

She tilts her head slightly, but says “Sure.”

“So, this whole necromancy thing,” he says. “What’s, uh… What’s gonna happen?”

Mooney raises an eyebrow. “Well, presumably you’re gonna raise your pitcher from the dead.”

“No- no, I get that part, but, um. It can’t just be that easy, right? It’s not like, poof, magic, she’s back? And, I mean, there can only be five pitchers, right?”

Her face softens as she understands what he’s asking her. “Ah. Right.”

“Townsend!” comes the yell of Farrell Seagull. Mike realises abruptly that he and Mooney are the last players remaining on the pitch. He turns to look at Seagull, then frantically back at Mooney.

She smiles a bit. “Don’t worry. I’ll text you about it, that okay?”

“Uh, yep,” he says. “Thanks.”

She nods and goes to join her own teammates.

Later, she texts Mike. The information is new, but not surprising. Mike Townsend knows what he’s gotta do.

-

Mike smiles sadly. Reminiscing about old times is fun, but… he has to be careful not to get too caught up in it.

He moves to a window. It’s dark outside, as it always is. Stadium lights flash on and off in the sky. The lower floors of his apartment building have disappeared, giving way to a fragmenting, swirling mandelbrot. Down, down, way down below, a blaseball spins vertically through the air. He thinks he hears someone shout ‘home run’. He thinks he sees someone glitch from base to base.

Things don’t ever quite make sense here in the Shadows, but Mike’s getting accustomed to it.

He wishes Jaylen would stop hurting people, but he doesn’t regret a thing.

He still remembers the announcement text on the scoreboard.

-

JAYLEN HOTDOGFINGERS RETURNS

MIKE TOWNSEND RETREATS TO THE SHADOWS

**Author's Note:**

> title is from mike townsend (knows what he's gotta do) by the garages.  
> i kinda skipped over the actual necromancy ritual in this - maybe ill write out my lore for that some day :-) thank you for reading


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